19th-century champagne haul shows seabed is perfect wine cooler

“Animal notes” and “wet hair” were the terms used to describe 170-year-old champagne hauled up from the bottom of the Baltic Sea in 2010. We now have chemical confirmation that the wine had aged well, but the mystery over how it got there is even murkier.

When the 163 bottles were recovered from 50 metres beneath the waves, seals on the corks showed that the wine had come from champagne houses Veuve Clicquot, Ponsardin, Heidsieck and Juglar (renamed Jacquesson & Fils in 1829). They were estimated to be between 170 and 180 years old.

Three of the Veuve Clicquot bottles were tasted by oenologists – on first opening they described the champagne as “sometimes cheesy”, with “animal notes” and elements of “wet hair”.

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Swirling the champagne around in a glass to oxygenate it softened the flavours, which were then deemed to be grilled, spicy, smoky and leathery with fruity and floral notes.

Philippe Jeandet of the University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne, France, and his colleagues later got their hands on 2-millilitre samples from each bottle, which they ran through a detailed chemical analysis. This showed that the wine had been aged in wooden barrels, probably for six to eight months. That’s consistent with documents left behind by Madame Clicquot, and different from the vineyard’s modern practice of making its champagne in steel containers.

Mysterious destination

Traces of copper and iron came either from iron nails in the wooden barrels or iron instruments used during the winemaking, but did not spoil the wine.

The location of the bottles suggested they were on their way from Germany to Russia when they sank, sometime during the early 1800s. Russians at the time liked their bubbly very sweet – Madame Clicquot’s notes mention that it was common practice in Russia to have a small bowl of sugar on the table to spoon into their wine. To cater to this market Clicquot made special extra-sweet batches for them.

So, if the Baltic bottles had been intended for Russia, they should have contained extra sugar. Jeandet and his colleagues found that while they were sweeter than modern bottles, they were nowhere near sweet enough for that market. They think they must have been destined for German tables, but admit that makes it difficult to explain why their ship was sailing through the northern Baltic.

“Overall, our analysis confirms that this champagne has kept the intrinsic characteristics of what a champagne is,” says Jeandet. “This is fantastic, to observe that after 200 years of ageing at bottom of the sea.”

Expensive taste

The conditions that the bottles were preserved in – complete darkness and a constant temperature between 2 ºC and 4 ºC – were ideal for wine ageing, he adds.

“Considering that these champagnes had been aged underwater for 170 years, they were amazingly well preserved,” says Patrick McGovern, who studies the history of food and alcohol production at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. “[They are] testimony to human innovation in producing fermented beverages, which were central to human cultures around the world.”

Jeandet says the experiment is mostly a marketing ploy. “I’m sure it will not change the taste of the wine but people will be proud to put it on their table and say, ‘ho! You know this bottle has spent six years under the sea’. I know there are a lot of people ready to pay a lot of money for these bottles.”

The 170-year-old champagne bottles are some of the oldest ever to have been tasted. In 2009, Perrier-Jouet opened an 1825 vintage from its cellars: at the time of tasting it was 184 years old and still tasted fine, with notes of truffles and caramel.